by Steve Weiner
‘One morning I strangled him with barbed wire. I shoved his body inside a burlap bag and dumped him where no train could stop in time.
‘I went back to Chicago. There were more missions than before. Something was changing. Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Church of God, proselytizing. The Methodists fed me and put me on a train to South Dakota. We were going to Camp Bethesda, their farm on the Belle Fourche. The train waited two days and two nights. Pinkertons argued with the Methodists. Methodists fought with private detectives. There were a hundred drifters in the car with me, and many working men who had never been on the rails before. Finally we pulled out into the suburbs and the open country.
‘We heard that the Ohio National Guard had chased tramps into the desert. Vigilantes caught a tramp and nailed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. In Elkhart, Indiana, tramps had cut wheat and those who died had their mouths and assholes packed with fish and were buried between the rows as fertilizer. In Indian Creek, Oklahoma, firemen beat tramps with hose nozzles and those who fought back were hammered with crowbars.
‘The Pinkertons set a wire on the ties with a spike on the end. The cars ahead bent the wire down and when it whipped up at sixty miles an hour it tore a hot rodder’s head off. That grizzled head bounced like a cantaloupe into the brush. A mush head slept in the coal car. The train took a hard curve and in the morning the Methodists shovelled what was left into the furnace with the coal.
‘Methodist guards lived in the rear car. We ate soup, bread, carrots, onions, and barley cake. Men slept in tarpaulin, using broken shovels for frying pans. We peed out the doors. We passed through rail yards but only at night. The Methodists told us our bodies were ruined. They said our windows were broken, our mansions blighted.
‘The train seemed to go on and on. I never rode a train that knew less where it was going. We rode all over the North American continent. Overhead the Kansas stars twirled senselessly. We passed steel factories, black trestle bridges, silver silos. And the rails, those curving rails, blue-bright at noon, red at sunset, snaked back to the same factories and bridges. A tramp killed himself jumping on to the rails. There was a woman – Mary Topeka – tattooed herself with iodine and a penknife. Some drank paraffin, or rolled cigarettes in kerosene. We strained lighter fluid through kerchieves, drank it, and went blind.
‘The Methodists came on board and held covenant. Some of us converted and we saw them later, wearing black coats, carrying rifles.
‘We lost all restraint. We had orgies in the sandstorms. Jockers fought jockers for wives. Men bent over other men. Twenty of us, thirty, three dozen in the car, kneeling on slats, while the yellow dust whistled through the freight cars. The homosexuals rode like thunder through the storms, the rain and hail. Stones kicked up by the train shot into the mêlée. All night, all day, it continued, in the moonlight, up the Black Mountains.
‘We got to the Belle Fourche. We got to Camp Bethesda. It was just a burned warehouse on concrete foundations. The Methodists became dispirited. They let us walk off into the washes. I was starving. I heard meadowlarks singing the New Connexion. Barbed wire bloomed. Silver Bibles rained over the buttes.
‘But Methodism is terrible. Listen. I enlisted. In bootcamp I ran twelve miles, cleaned and disassembled rifles. But at night my blood was sick with cheap wine and Methodist fever.
‘I went to Korea with the First Cavalry Division, to Unsan. The Chinese attacked over the cliffs, burning jeeps, lobbing grenades. I was hit by shrapnel. The Chinese bundled me to a POW camp at Huichon. I was thrown in with prisoners from the Second Division, and from the Fifth Marine Division, and Turks. Canadians, too. The Chinese turned us over to North Koreans. I lived on rice and dirty water. I got dysentery and became a human skeleton. North Koreans passed down the rows and shot two of us. Trucks brought more Americans. The North Koreans shot two more.
‘United Nations jets strafed the roads and American artillery destroyed the road, but the Koreans only became more insane. They killed Private Jim Flowers with a shovel and garrotted Corporal Perry with a leather strap. They dragged Privates Sam Lepke and Jim Jakes with a jeep until their teeth were driven up their gums. They snapped off Corporal Esparto’s legs with a snowplough and hauled Sergeant Prester into the snow and shoved him into the earth-turning tractor screws.
‘They hauled me into the administration annex. Now here’s the unbelievable miracle. They knew all about William Brick. They told me every detail of the corruption of the gospel train. They asked if I was saved by grace or by faith. I said I didn’t know. They hit me and carved Christ’s name in my thighs. I showed them my Methodist papers, but they didn’t believe them. They ripped up my certificates and beat me with lead pipes.
‘Suddenly an American shell hit the annex. The pain was so awful I jerked right out of my body and turned in a circle of fire. Stars rose with me through green veils, like the northern lights. Have you seen the northern lights?’
‘ – I’ve seen the northern lights.’
‘Below me were screaming men, everywhere men were screaming. Pure as dark light I floated. I was attached to my body by a long segmented silver cord. How I prayed the cord would break! But the American jets pounded the camp below and I suddenly rushed down and snapped back. The camp was liberated. The Red Cross brought me tea, porridge. I sat on a bench with an army blanket over my head. A psychiatrist interviewed me. I never said a word. A mortar fragment had lodged in my arm, but what did I care? I had learned the grace of Wesley, which lets me endure the wretchedness of my degraded existence. I will survive. I am not afraid. You’ve heard it before, in a different way, now hear it again.
‘Eternity’s ends justify the means.’
Thirteen
I was a derelict.
I went to Chicago. Newspapers blew down the sidewalks. It was May but very cold. Negroes rode buses and yelled from cars. Department store windows were full of Negro mannikins. Chicago was the capital of Negroes. Billboards rose over telephone wires, advertising skin-whitener. I circled to Division Street, and slept under a fire escape behind a Negro hairdresser on Clark Street.
I changed my name to Michael Jordan and worked as a cook’s assistant. I was a grocery boy. I lived by stealing. Ruined people lay in doorways. There were ruined people everywhere. We all drank. A Negro chased me with a knife down an alley.
‘Come here, white boy!’
It stayed very cold. Chicago smelled like cattle shit and petroleum. Buildings were lost in rain. I lost my photograph of Antoinette Hartmann and coughed all day. I walked under the E1 to the stockyards. By night I slept under fire escapes.
A Negro stopped me on Clark Street.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Michael Jordan.’
‘You need a job?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Be here same place. Tomorrow. I’ll get you a job.’
I killed time by riding the buses. Rain slid down the windows. Negro women climbed on with huge packages. I went back to Clark Street. I woke in a parking lot. I ripped my trousers, which had stuck to the asphalt. I went back to Clark Street. My Negro never came.
I walked along the North Branch Canal. Concrete was dark and dirty under the warehouses. The wind whistled up the railroads. Suddenly the Negro grabbed me.
‘Do you still want that job?’
‘Sure.’
‘You be right here six sharp. In the morning.’
I couldn’t sleep that night. Crème de menthe had ruined my stomach. I got up at dawn, drank, and limped over the trestle bridge. Light shattered against the dirty canal like a broken chandelier. My Negro never came.
I visited the museum of love.
It was a white building with columns, established by a disciple of Elizabeth Cade Stanton. It had once been a Christian Science church. There were derelicts outside. Inside, on the newel post, was a copy of the Declaration of Sentiments and a portrait of Sojourner Truth. Broken exhibits from the natural history museum were ju
mbled in the upstairs hall, where tilted mirrors reflected the viewer.
In a six-foot-high diorama Indian women wild-riced. The moon was bright, silver crossed by flying silhouettes. Owls, badgers and muskrats peered from bracken. A moose foraged in shallows. A bigger moose with antlers mounted the first.
In the second diorama a midnight hawk flew through the north woods. Below were a winding river, moonlit lakes, a tavern. I put a nickel in the slot. A chrome ball rolled down a forest road and dropped through a hole, came out below, rolled between miniature pine trees and dropped into a darker hole, which triggered a light in the tavern: plump and pink, a woman knelt on pillows.
In a glass panorama two sailors kissed on a pitching deck in a rain of silver beads. I pressed a red button. Far away a raft became visible. On it was a shipwrecked sailor.
There was a cage of tomatoes. I put a nickel in the slot. A mechanical spider crawled down the ramp, feeling its way. Suddenly a needle slapped up and pinned it to the roof. Below the cage was a dish of honey. There must have been poison in it because cockroaches lay dead in radiating lines.
In the darkest part of the museum the exhibits were locked. A creature of rodent bones and antlers, dressed in feminine rags, was luminescent, and she sat on a four-legged cabinet. A flood light hit her out of the dark. She opened her antler arms.
Jean-Michel.
I knelt and crossed myself.
It is I.
‘Oh,’ I whispered. ‘Love …’
Down the row were exhibits. Decomposed pigs wore uniforms, pipes stuck in their mouths, trotters rigid, and a two-headed owl with a crucifix around its neck. Beyond that was a three-legged calf, its liver protruding from its belly, a grin of red lips leering. In a velvet robe a baby horse, a hoof sticking through its forehead, fluttered its tongue.
I went even further. In a glass case was a silver canoe resting on razor blades in the ferns. Behind it were two dolls joined at the waist. Over their heads was a stuffed owl leaking feathers.
I came out of the darkness and there was a white church in the wilderness. White bonnets hung on wooden pegs. Eiderdown floated from the rafters. I put a nickel in the slot. Mechanical men banged a drum. Bald women, naked and hairless, glided into a dance. One caught an imaginary ball. A second poured invisible tea. A third petted a dog that was not there.
A history of fashion concluded the exhibits. Women’s large-brimmed hats, lace blouses, gold bracelets and a case of perfumes. I bought postcards of deformed women, photographs from New Orleans.
Beggars followed me.
‘A little love?’
‘Please – love -’
‘I need love -’
I left the museum of love.
I lost track of days. The wind was dry but fierce. My coat turned to rags. Crossing Union Street I ran into my Negro.
‘You still want that job, Michael Jordan?’ he asked.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Meet me right here, tomorrow, corner of Union.’
I waited on Union Street. My Negro came. He wore baggy blue trousers and a wool hat. He said his name was Roost.
‘My grandmother say, trouble come to roost.’
We went down a concrete ramp. I followed Roost and we came out on a mezzanine. Cattle, thousands of cattle, moaned under filthy skylights. A hammer smashed their foreheads. Their knees buckled, hooks on rails yanked them up, Negroes slit their throats. Blood poured into troughs. Negroes ripped out fistfuls of intestines. By the time the cows reached the packing room they were hairy skeletons.
‘How old are you?’ a white man asked me.
‘Sixteen, Mr Kobacki,’ Roost said.
‘He don’t look sixteen.’
‘He worked two years for Armour Star.’
‘Put disinfectant on him.’
Roost gave me galoshes. I worked in the calves’ section. Negro boys jumped at hanging calves with long knives and shot hot water into cadavers. I pushed brain fragments and viscera into a canal using a squeegee pole. Flayed ligament waved like anemones. I felt cow hair tickling my throat. I scraped a carcase.
I stepped out of the canal.
‘I’m going to be sick, Roost.’
I bent at a standpipe and vomited. A whistle blew. We took off our gloves. Negroes ate lunch.
‘See? Like women,’ a Negro said. ‘Folds of flesh, hair. Tongue.’
I leaned over again.
‘Oh, they’ve made him ill,’ a Negro said.
Roost tore his sandwich in half and gave it to me. It smelled like the calves.
I hosed viscera all afternoon. We quit. We gang-showered. I bent over to rub my bad foot and Roost winked at me. I got into my stinking shirt and trousers. Roost and I went into the twilight. Neon lights were on, women were carried along in the rush of evening. Roost gave me two American dollars.
‘Eat, Michael Jordan.’
‘I don’t sleep with men, Roost.’
‘Didn’t say you did.’
‘Just so we understand.’
‘I understand.’
‘I’m glad you understand,’ I said.
‘I’m glad I understand.’
‘I mean, I used to, but I don’t any more.’
‘Me neither.’
We separated at Clark and Division. I bought a bottle of Seagram’s and a bottle of Southern Comfort and when I woke I was in a cheap hotel room. I don’t know how I got there. Roost was at the foot of the bed, leaning over me. An aureole of light speared outward from the back of his head.
‘Today’s Friday,’ he said. ‘Yesterday was Thursday. You wasn’t to work yesterday.’
‘Who put me here?’
‘I did. I found you in the middle of Clark Street. I brought you here or they’d’ve taken you to General Hospital. You don’t never want to go to General Hospital.’
‘How much you pay for this room?’
‘Eighty-five cents.’
‘Take it from my pay,’ I said.
‘What pay? You got seventy-five cents times seven hours. That’s five dollars and twenty-five cents. But I got you the job. The money’s mine. In fact, you owe me two dollars that I gave you on the North Branch trestle bridge.’
‘Did they fire me?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
I sank back against the pillow.
‘Also,’ Roost said, ‘you owe me eighty-five cents each day you stay in this hotel.’
‘I got no money.’
‘What you planning to do?’
‘We can work something out.’
Roost walked around the room. He urinated into a blue and white pitcher. At the top of a wall partition was a draughty gap.
‘They subdivided the room,’ he said. There’s another room across the partition.’
Suddenly he turned to me. He leaned so close I saw the pores of his skin.
‘You ever see Negro lips this close?’ he asked.
He vibrated his lips.
‘Bbbbbrrrr -’
‘Go away.’
‘You don’t see that every day,’ he said.
The draught blew harder from the dark gap above the partition. An old man coughed. Roost looked up.
‘Somebody’s dying in the next room,’ he said.
The dark gap began to undulate.
‘I’m hallucinating, Roost.’
‘You got the blood sickness.’
‘My dead friends – blood – heaving and rolling – ’
Roost sat on the edge of the bed. He shook me by the shoulder. I snapped awake.
‘I don’t care about your goddamned friends,’ he said. ‘Or your women problems.’
‘Get off my bed.’
‘Do you want to know the kind of things go on in Chicago?’
‘Get off.’
The old man in the next half of the room coughed long and hard. Roost got up and banged on the partition.
‘He is dying,’ Roost said. ‘I’ll bet he’s got a wallet.’
‘Is his door open?’
&nb
sp; ‘I’ll go see.’
Roost went out the door and peered into the room. I got up. The floorboards shot up and hit me in the face.
‘You okay?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, this guy’s just lying there dying.’
The next room was even smaller. An elderly man with wavy white hair lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He wore tan slacks and a white shirt, a black string tie with a turquoise clasp. From time to time he worked his Adam’s apple. We went inside.
‘We was wondering if you was all right,’ Roost said. ‘We heard you coughing.’
‘Quite all right,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
We came closer. The old man’s baby blue eyes were enlarged by thick spectacles. His forearms were so thin the wrist knobs protruded. Suddenly Roost tore the old man’s watch off. I pushed the old man over and searched his pockets. There were two pieces of turquoise.
‘Take them to the pawn shop,’ I told Roost. ‘See what you get.’
Roost hit the old man hard on the spine and ran from the room.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ the old man quavered.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘What would you like us to do?’
I turned the old man over and slapped him in the face. I yanked out his dentures. He started to bleed. I made him rinse his gums.
‘Why do you hurt me?’ he asked, trembling.
‘Shut up.’
I didn’t know what to do with the old man. I made him lie down.
‘You look like you’re ready to leave the body,’ I snorted.
‘I already have.’
‘Tell me.’
The Rosicrucian
‘I was an orphan.
‘I worked on a farm near Anadarko, Oklahoma. I drove the tractor, picked cotton, and built sheep pens. I was sent to work around Verden, Apache and Fort Cobb. I tried to run away but they caught me, tied me to a tractor wheel and beat me with a cattle stick.